Great Photo! But We Probably Have Already Seen It

In most cases we historic image collectors can never get enough of these old photos, but for anything there can always be too much. Post a cool photo of an old amusement park or ice cream parlor and it seems great. Post it again and those who didn’t see it the first time can get their say. But re-post it a few more times and it starts to get tedious. If the image is very small, or not really so old, or in some other way out of place it can be even more unnerving when it is seen again and again.

Frequently re-posted Wetson’s photo

While there are probably millions of photos sitting out there waiting to be seen, there are a few that wind up posted over and over. I often wonder who originally owned these photos, will these people ever get the credit (or blame) they deserve for bringing them to the worlds attention?

Facebook and other photo posting sites tend to draw all attention to the three or four most recent photos to the page, this makes it hard for new people coming in to see the older posts, and they may not realize how many times an image has already been seen. With that said here is my short list of over-saturated over-blogged over-done photos. Where I could I provided a suggestion of where an equal or better photo could be found in its place.

OBI, Black and White Wikipedia Photo

Black and White Oak Beach Inn
The Oak Beach Inn might be the most famous dance club ever to stand on Long Island, but this black and white photo doesn’t really do it justice. This photo shows its appearance before the infamous Bob Matherson took it over. It is years before the Iced Tea was invented here, years before all the clamor of neighbors and town government to try to and eventually succeed in shutting it down. This shot is available on Wikipedia, and therefore very easy to find and download.

In 2010 a Long Island band Two Cent Sam put out a good song called the The OBI Song and dedicated it to the club. The person who made the video clearly spent a good deal of time putting it together. It has images to match up the lyrics, but every time the OBI itself is mentioned we see the same out of context pre 1970’s Wikipedia photo. A shot of a more time appropriate OBI image would have made made more sense and brought more meaning to the video.

Black & White Douglaston Korvettes
If you grew up in northeast Queens this was probably an important store to you (and still is today as a Macy’s). Most Long Island Korvette’s were built in locations that were slightly off the main drags, but not this one, which was built right into the side of a huge sand pit it on a hill and when completed became the only department store east of Fresh Meadows and west of Roosevelt Field.

There’s really nothing wrong with the photo, the detail and definition are very good. The stone face facade of the Korvette’s, the lightng of the parking lot, the 1960’s model american cars and all. The shot is probably from November 1964 when the store first opened. The problem is there are no other contemporary photos to go along with it, all we have is this one single shot, and so it alone continues to be re-posted. We don’t know if this was part of a series, we have no idea what the source of this photo is at all. There aren’t many good vintage Korvettes photos and almost none of the Douglaston location. I did just posted one here to offer at least one alternative but it is a shame there aren’t more.

Restored Dugan’s Truck

Restored Dugan’s TruckThis Dugans truck photo, which appears on the www.dugansbakers.com is a current photo of an old vehicle. We continue to see this same photo over and over. It would be nice if we could even get a new different photo of this same truck. much less a truly original vintage milk truck photo.

Current Whip Truck

The same applies to any recent photos of any old vehicles. Once is fine, but to keep re-posting these is more than needs to be seen. It would be greatly preferable to see vintage photos of these trucks in their heyday,or at least find us fresh ones of these vehicles. I found and posted a vintage Dugan’s truck photo from Long Island historical site spoonercental.com at the fan page here.

Fairyland From Queens Boulevard
Fairyland was an amusement park in the 1950’s and 60’s on Queens Boulevard in the space that is now the Queens Center Mall (not the Queens Place mall which is two blocks up although if you google queens center mall you get a picture of the Queens Place Mall.

Fairyland from Queens Boulevard

It’s not easy to find old small local amusement park shots from back in the day, so the few that are in circulation tend to get re-posted frequently.There is no other good photo of Fairyland from the outside, and probably as a result, this shot shows up again and again.

The facebook group devoted to Fairyland is similar to other area amusement park groups. A look at its photos reminds us that something that is missing from the amusement park of today. For most of Long Island, the days of sharing the short trip to the local amusement park with neighbors is gone. The rides seem to be a something of a given today, while back then they still felt like more of a privilege. It’s a shame more of us didn’t take photos of these precious moments when we had the chance, (although taking photos wasn’t nearly as easy as it is today). If you get out to adventureland or get your kids on any other rides at area carnivals, don’t forget to bring your camera and try to get some good shots of the kids on the rides, you’ll probably want to look at them again one day.

Chow Chow Cup

–Chow Chow Cup 1960’sI never personally ate from the Chow Chow cup truck. so far as I know, they never made it to northern Bayside (Bay Terrace) in my day growing up there. But I can say I’ve seen the one in this photo at least a hundred times.

The problem with this and a lot of other photos on the page is, who would ever have thought we would one day want to see a photo of things like an area food vendor truck. Film was expensive, we didn’t have digital cameras, so who would want to ‘waste’ their money. The only other photos I could find of the truck was on this page, which happens to have right click and save disabled, (making it harder to re-post). Hey, it looks like the truck may have made it all the way up to Woodstock.

Don’t Expect Much To Change
The fact that there are more and more growing pages and web sites devoted to old photos and history probably only means that these and others like them will continue to be posted and posted once more. I may not want to see these photos again but I just posted them all one more time myself. And they wouldn’t get posted at all if they didn’t evoke some personal and shared memories. So if you have any good photos of these places or ones like them, please don’t hesitate posting them on the places no more page, or group. Maybe the images above wont go away, but perhaps we can continue to find others to go along with them, and ones like these will be posted a little less frequently.

2 Comments

You can always use View Source in any browser to see the actual URL for any image. Of course this doesn’t grant the legal rights to reuse the image. In this case the photo doesn’t seem to be attributed at all, so it’s likely the author of the page you found it on doesn’t know the rights situation for the photo either.